


The Moon

by VeryImportantDemon



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dolokhov Shoots Pierre In The Duel, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied Pierre/Andrey, Implied Pierre/Natasha, Ish it's kind of prose but not really a poem, It's implied but very heavily, Prose Poem, Suicidal Thoughts, Transgender Pierre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 09:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12033471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryImportantDemon/pseuds/VeryImportantDemon
Summary: It is dark, and Pierre sees the moon.





	1. Chapter 1

It is dark, and Pierre sees the moon.

He thinks it a little odd that this is the things he sees first. He is paces away from the man who tried to seduce his wife, paces away from a man with a gun in his hand. Paces, paces, paces, so few that he could count them on his fingers and toes, and he is looking at the moon.

It is beautiful, he thinks, very beautiful. It hangs in the sky and it watches him, watches him like a single, great eye. He shrinks slightly, feeling, self-conscious suddenly under this gaze. This moon, this god, watches him. The moon watches him, and he wears clown shoes and he dresses not in burgundy. He is ready to die, but he is a little ashamed of how death will gaze upon him. He is too large and too sick with booze and not _Pierre_ enough. He has been Pierre enough, and in his tortured mind, that makes perfect sense. He never found himself and he lost hope that he ever would. He is not himself. He is... Someone else. And whoever this someone else is, they are asleep.

Oh, how Pierre wants to wake up. He wants to wake up so desperately. He does not want the moon to see him like this, but like this is how the stars see him, too. He swallows hard, past a lump in his throat, and he pulls his eyes from the sky.

Pierre looks down at his hands, the pistol in his right. The metal trembles and shakes. He is not ready for this. He is not ready for this. Why does he think a duel is the right way to go? Why, oh, why? Why has he even suggested this maddness? He does not want to shoot Dolkhov, though he does not know if Dolokhov feels the same.

He remembers them, quite clearly. Because he does not fear death, in any sense of the word. If he dies, he dies. He just regrets that he is not awake when he does it.

Pierre forces his fingers to tighten around the weapon. The metal is cool under his fingers and it stills a little, because of the pressure he applies and nothing else. He lifts his gun, and he hears Anatole's voice in his ears, be after the first repetition, it is not Anatole that speaks, it is Andrei. Andrei is so, so far away from him, too far away, but Pierre hears his voice as clearly as if he was right next to him, close enough to touch. Andrei is fighting and Pierre is cowering but he still hears his voice.

How he wishes his Andrei was close enough to touch. Andrei is such a good man, so brave and smart and unafraid. Pierre wishes he could be like him.

 _Pierre, hold your fire._  
Pierre, hold your fire.  
Pierre, not yet.

Not yet. Pierre can wait. He is a very patient man. Pierre does not mind waiting at all. So, he waits. He takes a step forward, and a step, and a step, and he raises his gun. His arm twitches slightly and his gun is a little higher than level when something explodes with a dull _boom_.

A gun.

Pierre looks at his hand. His finger is nowhere near the trigger. He had not fired. Then the noise... His eyes go lower, his chin tilts down, and he realizes then. It is Dolokhov's gun that fires. Dolokhov has shot him. There is a bullet in his stomach because Fedya Dolokhov has shot him.

So this is how he dies.

His legs crumple beneath him and before he knows it, he is in a heap in the snow. He breathes in as deeply as he can, the cold and the pain waking up his lungs even if they cannot wake up his heart. He is cold, achingly so, and his front is shockingly red. The bloods soaks him, soaks everything. He has been shot. His hand falls to his side and he releases the gun, not sorry to see it go, because t does go. It disappears into a drift of snow, throwing up a few icy snowflakes that Pierre watches drift to the ground. His breathing is labored as he looks up at the sky.

There is shouting, much shouting. He hears Anatole and Dolokhov and Helene and somewhere in his mind, he hears Natasha. He hears Natasha and he hears Andrei even though he knows for certain they would never be here because he does not deserve them. They are too kind and good, and he is too... _Bezukhov_. He is too Pierre, and yet he is not Pierre enough. He is a complication, an impossibility, an oxymoron. He deserves what he gets.

He looks up at the sky again, and he smiles at the moon, and wonders if this is how he dies.

If it is, he is not sure he minds.


	2. Chapter 2

The gunshot rings in Pierre's ears as he falls. Rings louder and longer than any noise he had ever heard. Or perhaps it only lasts a few seconds. His perception of time is skewed, he assumes. He has just been shot, after all. Everything is odd. Everything is... Different. Everything is quiet. Well, everything is quiet except for three noises - the gunshot that rings long into the night, the pounding of his own heart, and Hélène's scream. He does think he has made up the last one, because Hélène would not be screaming for him. Why would she? They are married, but they are not in love. She has not touched him, has not wanted to touch him, since their wedding night, since it was only proper that the marriage be consummated. She would not be screaming for his sake. When he drunkenly announces earlier that evening that his doctor says drinking will kill him, she urges him on. Perhaps she wants him dead, he thinks wildly. Perhaps she wants him dead! That would make sense. She could go on then having her affair with Dolokhov undeterred, because it would not even be an affair anymore Pierre would be dead. And as Pierre is the last remaining Bezokhov, everything he has will be left to her. She will be rich and free to lay in the bed of whomever she likes. Surely that is her reasoning, Pierre thinks as he falls. It has to be. He doesn't, he can't, think that maybe, maybe she had come to care for him a little. Even if time is slowing down and stretching and chaos is reigning all around him, he doesn't have the time or the love for himself to think that perhaps she has grown to care for him, and that is why he screams. It must be that he makes the noise up to comfort himself, Pierre decides as he crashes into the snow.

  
A few snowflakes flutter up around where he has landed, and he finds himself watching them in the stillness. He doesn't know why, but he watches them. They're peaceful and small and beautiful, all things Pierre is not. His mind is tortured and he is far too oafish and ugly. He is not like the snowflakes. For a few moments, there is silence, and then he hears again. Screaming and shouting and general chaos. Andrei would like it, he thinks. Why is he thinking like this now? Why is he thinking at all now? His mind is so muddled, thoughts jumping up and down and side to side faster than he can really comprehend them. The snow he loves watching so much mere moments again that is in his line of vision starts to turn red. _Red_? he thinks. _Why ever would the snow be red?_ He doesn't ever realize that it is because it is soaked through with his blood.

  
His thoughts shift again, careening in every direction as he tries to absorb every stimulus around him. People are running towards him, and he thinks he hears Hélène yelling again. He heard the name Balaga and doctor and quickly. Everything has to happen quickly, apparently. He wonders about that, too. Why doesn't everyone simply slow down?  
He knows he is dying when he sees Andrei crouched beside him, his hand cupping Pierre's cheek. His lips are moving but Pierre can scarcely discern the words. He thinks he makes out my friend, my friend, my dearest friend, but he isn't sure of anything. He watches Andrei touch his cheek, and then he lets out a quiet sigh, and his eyes close. For the first time in his life, he is at peace.

  
They bring the troika, driven by the one they call Balaga, but Pierre is not awake to see it. They pick him up and place him in the back, but Pierre is not awake to see it. Dolokhov looks shocked and frightened and remorseful and approaches the troika, but Pierre isn't awake to see it. He isn't awake to see how scared Hélène looks when they tell her he may not make it through the night. He isn't awake the see anything.  
They decided in his slumber that he will live, since he has survived that long, but he slumbers so long that he misses his wife's verbal duel with Dolokhov.

  
Pierre does not dream. He sleeps for over a day, over 24 hours consecutively, but he does not dream, no really. He relives. He relives every mistake he has ever made, and he has made plenty.  
He relives the earliest moment he knew his father didn't love him. That one is a particular vivid memory. In fact, it is his first. Pierre is young, so young. He is perhaps 4 years old then. He is setting the table for dinner and the crystal wine pitcher slips out of his hands. It shatters, and bright red wine splashes over his socks, soaking them, soaking his shoes, soaking the carpet. Everything is covered in wine and the crystal shards sparkle like snow. Snow... Pierre likes snow. But he does not like his father. He does not like him at all. Even at the ripe old age of seven, he knows his father does not like him. His father raises a hand against him again, smacking his cheek again and again until it as red as wine, as red as blood. He says he's useless and fat and stupid and why does he have a son as stupid as Pierre?

  
Pierre goes to France soon after. He studies in France, learns everything he can. His original goal is to learn enough that his father will no be able to call him stupid anymore. He thinks he succeeds, because he knows so, so much, but it isn't enough, for him or for his father. It is never, ever enough. But he could never fix being fat, he could never fix being useless.

  
He relives when he first realizes he's in love with Andrei. He is young then, young but already a drunkard, his eyes never wide and hopeful, young but his heart already full to bursting, young but his nose always in a book, young but his breath smells of wine. Andrei takes his arm and calls him petrushka and his eyes are so soft and so kind. So kind. And he doesn't recoil from Pierre like so many others have, doesn't call him stupid or useless, looks at him with proper wonder. And Pierre falls in love and feels the shame rise in his chest. No, he doesn't love a man. He does not love a man. Why can he just... Not? Perhaps his father was right. He is stupid. He is broken. He doesn't even need to relive those memories in his sleep because he relives them every day in his own mind.  
He relives the day Andrei goes to war.

  
He relives the day of his engagement to his Hélène. He wants to love her, he really does. She is everything he is not - intelligent and cunning and silver-tongued and beautiful. He wants to love her, but he cannot make himself do it. He does not know why. He knows he wants to be friends with her, though. They will likely never have children, never have someone to carry on Bezukhov but Hélène, but perhaps he will have a friend.  
He relives the moment in which he drunkenly challenged Dolokhov to a duel. He is furious, reckless, sick. He is very, very sick. He doesn't even love Hélène like a lover but like a friend he so desperately wants to have, but his wife, the status itself, is something to him. Wife means someone desires him. Someone cares for him. And Dolokhov is taking that from him. Dolokhov is taking the only feeling of want someone has given him since Andrei. So he challenges him.

  
Most importantly and most often, he relives the duel itself. He sees in his mind's eye the snow glittering beneath him, his large feet, the pistol. Pierre does not like guns. This is the first time he has ever picked up a gun, he thinks wildly, both in the dream and the real moment. He sees himself lifting the weapon, sees his finger shaking on the trigger. He sees all of this like it isn't even happening to him, like he is just watching the duel. But the man he watches is himself. He sees Dolokhov, sees him press the trigger as the Pierre across the snow starts raising his gun to the sky. He sees the bullet travel across the icy plain and into his stomach. He watches Pierre fall, and his thoughts play out again like a broken record as he falls.  
_HowlonghaveIbeensleepinghowlonghaveIbeensleepingIdon'tknowanythingIdon'tknowanythingdidIsquandermydivinity_? They play faster and faster and faster and Pierre's heartbeat speeds up as the chaos around him ensues.  
God, don't let me die while I'm like this. God, don't let me die while I'm like this.  
He doesn't want to die like this.

  
But he does wake up. He wakes up and all he can think of first is the pain. He is in pain like he had never felt before, an awful, terrible, burning pain, pain that marches up from his stomach an consumes every nerve. He almost cries out when he wakes up, and he thinks he actually does cry a little, because his cheeks are wet. He feels shame instantly. There are men out fighting and dying and Pierre is in his sickbed crying. He needs... He needs to get up. He needs to do something. He needs to feel productive, or maybe he needs a drink. Yeah, he thinks he needs a drink. He scarcely recalls the duel, just scattered memories of pain and snow and Andrei even though Andrei is away. He doesn't know the extent of his injuries, so he doesn't know how badly an idea rising at the time will be.  
His sits up, which sends him crying again as his stomach burns. He looks down, hiccuping once as he tries to stifle his sobs. He is wrapped in bandages soaked with blood, blood that stains his old shirt and dots the blankets someone covers him with. But he forces his feet to move even though they won't obey him at first, and he stands up, shaking. He is shaking and his cheeks are wet but he is useless and he needs a drink. He makes his feet move and he moves... And moves... It is more of a stagger than a walk, and he barely makes it the few paces to his bedroom door before he collapses against the frame. He clings to it, trying to suck in a breath. His stomach aches and his shirt is so slick with blood its dripping. He barely thinks that he'll have to clean, because his study is close... He needs to do something. He needs to go to his study and read. And he needs a drink. God, how he needs a drink. His heart aches for it and he head aches, too. Perhaps a drink will dull the pain. It dulls the pain of his heartache. He forced himself to walk forward, every muscle in his body shaking and trembling, tears streaming down his cheeks. He cannot be useless. He must... He has work to do. Letters to write. Part of his mind, in his disillusioned state, thinks that behind the door to his study is Death, and Pierre will willing go to him.

  
The door to his study is closed, so he knocks on it. He will ask whoever is inside it for a book to read. He knocks, and Anatole comes to the door. Anatole looks... Bewildered. Pierre opens his mouth to ask for his book when his eyes roll back into his head and his face goes pale, and oh, the blood is everywhere, and he faints. He raises his hand which is shaking and gently raps on the door. Andrei opens it, and Pierre opens his mouth and promptly faints.  
He doesn't completely lose consciousness, but he loses part of it. He is aware of what is happening around him like he is watching it from afar. Andrei is there, and Pierre's disillusioned state does not stop to think that it is impossible, because Andrei is fighting a war. Andrei catches him, sort of. He grabs Pierre's larger arm, lowers him to the ground and cradles his head and his shoulders. "Andrei," Pierre whispers, and his throat sticks, tasting faintly of copper and not near enough of vodka. Andrei... But Andrei isn't here. Andrei isn't here... Andrei is gone.  
It isn't Andrei who holds him because this is impossible. But... He sees him. Andrei's face swims into focus above him. He blinks, slowly and carefully, and when he opens his eyes again, Andrei is still there.  
No, he thinks. This is your mind playing tricks on you. But he is content to let himself have this illusion. At least he will die in bittersweet comfort. Sweet because it is Andrei but bitter because the only way he can have him is when he imagines him. He can never have Andrei and he can never have Natasha, either.  
His breathing hitches and his stomach starts to ache with the pain and he starts crying again. "Je suis désolé," he tries to say, but the words come out cracked and broken and bloody, because there is blood on his lips. He is sorry, he is sorry, he is so, so sorry. "Je suis désolé," he cries again, sobbing, his body convulsing with the pain. He didn't imagine dying would hurt this much every time he had fantasized of it. He does not care in the slightest that Andrei isn't real, but he apologizes anyway.

  
Andrei speaks, slow and sweet and good, and Pierre does not have to imagine that. He has heard this man's voice in his ear many, many times. He sees himself hunched over in a chair in his study, his head aching as he squints at a book through his spectacles long after the sun has gone and he uses only the light of a candle. Andrei comes up behind him and squeezes his shoulders and whispers, his breath hot on Pierre's neck, I think it's time we get you to bed, hm?

  
"Hush, my friend," he says quietly. "Quiet, petrushka. Quiet..."

  
He struggles weakly against Andrei's hands, desperately trying to rise. He needs to rise. By Andrei's words... His infatuation with the man has made him unable to deny him even the simplest things. "I have been sleeping too long," he says around the mouthful of blood and the salty tang of his tears. He means it in that he sleeps because he still isn't in love. Well, he is in love. He is so, so in love with Andrei. But he can never have Andrei, he is betrothed. And male. He is beginning to think he is just infatuated with his flame, in love with the idea of someone who loves him. He wants to love someone, good and pure. He wants to be a god and he wants to make angels weep. He twitches his fingers and tries to sit up again, but the blood in pooling and he cannot. "Andrei, please," he begs. "I... I need to wake up. I need to wake up."


	3. Chapter 3

Pierre is afraid. He is always afraid, and he hates himself for it. He detests himself for it. He has always been afraid.

When he is a boy, not more then 4 or 5 or 6, not yet Pierre Bezukhov but _Peter Kirilovich_. He is Peter Kirilovich and he is so, so very afraid. He is small, small and very young in both body and made. He is round and ugly and stupid. He is a bastard. He is a useless bastard of a son. He fears his father. He fears the rage his father takes out on him. He fears the shatter of a wine glass, of the pitcher, fears the splash of red wine over his socks. He fears his mother. He fears the way she hates him. She hates what he stands for - he is a mistake to her, and nothing more. He is supposed to bring her riches and fortune and titles. He is supposed to make her happy. He will not be a Kirilovich for long. He will be a count! He will be Count Bezukhov, heir to an enormous fortune and countless estates. But she forgets that he is just a child, and an illegitimate one at that. His father cannot recognize him until he is dead, and by then... By then, Pierre's mother will likely be dead. So, she hates him for that. She hates him and because she hates him, Pierre fears her. He fears her with a dread deep in his bones. He fears Russian society. He fears every last one of them, all of them who called him _Petra Petra Petra_. He isn't Petra, he's _Peter_. He's _Pierre_. He fears those who see him as just as a bastard and nothing else. He fears the darkness. He fears himself. Oh, how he fears himself. He fears what he has done and what he hasn't. He fears what he will do. He fears that he will never be everything he can. He fears that he has wasted his life and that he will never be good for anything else. He fears his dependence on alcohol because the way he relies on a glass cannot be good. But perhaps most of all... He fears the bottom of a glass.

He fears everything, and he hates it, oh, God, how he hates it. He hates that he is the way he is. He fears loss, too. He has lost much. He loses his mother when he is young. He loses his father, too, but he isn't quite sure he has him to begin with. He starts to lose his identity when he drinks. He loses his best friend, loses the man that he loves, when he goes to war. And Pierre... He is too weak to go to war. Too weak to leave his home and his drinks and his books. He thinks, perhaps, this is why the war comes to him. Perhaps he and Dolokhov were warring, fighting for Hélène's affections, even if in that particular battle, Pierre fights more out of obligation. He does not love Hélène, but he feels like he ought to fight for her anyhow. For what she stands for, for his honor, even though deep inside of himself, he couldn't care any less about either of those things. But he is a Moscow man, he is an old soul. He toasts to married women and their lovers and then in the next breath, challenges one of the men his wife beds to a duel. It is odd that he fights with Dolokhov, though, of all her lovers. They were friends in another life, it seems. They had even shared the bed together a few nights, although very few were privy to that knowledge. If their trivial squabble is a war, well... Wars must have casualties, and Pierre is content to let himself be one of those casualties. He is prepared to die and has been for quite a while. It is always going to happen, he is always going to die. Pierre just assumes that it would be to a bottle instead. He assumes he'll die because of his drinking, just like his doctors say he will. Of course he'll die because of his drinking...

But it seems the gun is more likely.

He needs to speak. He isn't done speaking. He cannot die yet, not until he is done. He is seized, lying prone on the ground in the lap of a man he imagines, with a sudden desire. A desire to wake up. He wants to wake up! He wants to be a _god_. He wants to create. He wants to strike astonishment into angels. Oh, God, he wants to wake up now. "Don't let me die while I'm like this," he says, his voice raspy, and the blood on his tongue is too thick. He's practically spitting it, and in the back of his mind, he thinks he's reached his epiphany too late. He is choking and blood and he is bleeding on his floor. There is no drink in his hand yet he is dying anyway. His body bucks in protest, coughing, the blood it is trying to get rid of staining his lips. But he is in so much pain that the coughing fit only heightens his agony. He starts crying again, not great gulping sobs, ugly fat tears, like he usually does alone in his room at night, curled under the blankets as he cries because of who he is. He couldn't handle that. The tears roll down his cheeks anyway.

He is crying for the pain, crying for everything he has wasted. "Je suis désolé," he apologizes again, but this time it is to himself, for being himself. To God, if he exists, for wasting what he had been given so graciously. To his father, for not being a good son. To his mother, for not being rich. To Andrei, for not being a woman for him to love properly. To Natasha, for not being a man enough to love her. To Hélène, for being himself.  
He cannot stop apologizing. He cannot. If he does, he will leave things unsaid.

There is a sealed letter in the top drawer of his desk. It is addressed _To Whom It May Concern_. It details his thoughts and his wishes and his wills should he perish, but that isn't enough. He needs to speak. He knows Andrei is not real, but he must speak anyway. He must get these thoughts off of his chest before his heart gives out.

"I must love," he rasps again, letting out a single cough that rattles his chest and sends another wave of tears down his cheeks. "Love... Love... I cannot squander... Happy..." His thoughts are becoming disjointed. He is in pain. He wants to close his eyes and give up... He will talk when he wakes. Yes, he will talk when he wakes. He lets his eyes flutter shut, Andrei's face hovering above him.

He will talk when he wakes.

He will talk when he wakes...

Yes, he will talk when he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god??? I finished a WIP???


End file.
